World TV Day: The impact of TV around the world

Today is
World TV Day, the UN’s
celebration of the global
cultural impact of television. To mark the occasion, broadcasters from all over the world are releasing various statistics showing the ongoing impact of the medium.

And like every other day,
billions of people will together
spend billions of hours
watching TV, talking about it
and sharing it.

Given the advance of new technologies, what reach does TV still have? PEPPTV, an informal grouping of broadcasters’ trade bodies and sales houses has compiled the following stats showing the reach of TV around the world:

AUSTRALIA

TV reaches 16 million Australians every day, who watch a total of more than 4 billion minutes of
broadcast TV every day. In fact, Australian households are 30% more likely to have a TV set than a
barbeque. (TV penetration is 97% according to The Australian Multi-Screen Report Q2 2016, BBQ household stat is 63.7%)

CANADA

Canadians watch 130 million hours of TV every day – that’s the equivalent of four Super Bowls. What’s
more, the average TV campaign in Canada delivers an amazing 317 million impressions.

UNITED KINGDOM

In 2016, the average viewer in the UK will have watched over 1,300 hours of TV – the equivalent of
watching all seasons of Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards more than 10 times
over. In addition, every night in the UK there are 17 million conversations about TV advertising.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TV reaches 210 million people every day, who collectively watch 840,000,000 hours of TV per day. If
you stood all of TV’s daily viewers one on top of the other, they would stretch all the way to the moon (based on a stat revealing the average American being 5 feet 6 inches or 1.64m tall).

GERMANY

Germans like their TV: research indicates they watched an average of 223 minutes of TV per day in 2015 – or 16 billion minutes in total: That’s 30,000
years of TV in one day...

FRANCE

Every day in 2016, 43.5 million people in France tune into TV on a television set. With the average daily
audience of 2015, you could fill the Stade de France 558 times.
(Average French audience 2015: 45.2 million viewers per day, according to Médiamétrie figures)

ITALY

The total time Italians spent watching television in 2015 is equivalent to the time it takes to play 1,032
football matches, to bake 61,911 pizzas or to brew 222,878 cups of espresso.
(Average daily minutes for each day of the year: 92.866 minutes, target audience: Total population, source: Auditel
Nielsen TAM.)

SPAIN

A whopping 33 million Spaniards watch TV each day. You would have to fill Real Madrid’s home stadium
408 times to get the same reach with any other medium.
(Reach: Average Daily Accumulated Audience, Total Spain, Individuals 4+, from January to 7th November 2016.
Fact: Capacity of the Real Madrid stadium (Santiago Bernabeu): 85 454 seats.)

POLAND

In Poland, 25 million people tune in each day for an average of 4 hours and 18 minutes – totaling a
mind-boggling 483,883,433 daily views.
318 stadiums would have been necessary to fit all Poles watching the Poland-Portugal game of the Euro
2016.
(Reach: Nielsen, January to November 2016, population 4+ Fact: Football Euro 2016 quarterfinal match Poland-Portugal was watched by 21 432 231 of people. If all of them wanted to watch this match live on Stade Velodrome in Marseille, (capacity 67 346), they would fill in the stadium over 318 times.)

PORTUGAL
8.3 Million people watch television daily in Portugal. That’s twice as much as Cristiano Ronaldo’s
followers on Twitter.

SWEDEN

The most-watched program in 2016 – the final of the Eurovision Song Contest – was viewed by 3.6
million people, or four out of every ten Swedes.

FINLAND
3,679,000 Fins watched an average of four hours of TV each day (2015). In a very random fact released by PEPPTV, that means that in average,
the equivalent of over 6 million hockey games are being watched on TV by Fins daily.
(Here's the calculation: 3,647,000 viewers, who watch in average 4h per day (240 minutes) = 875,280,000 minutes viewed
875,280,000 minutes viewed divided by the average game of hockey (i.e. 140 minutes) = 6.252.000)

THE NETHERLANDS
TV reaches 11.2 million people daily who watch a total of 49 million hours every day (2016). You would
be a multi-billionaire if you received one Euro for every hour watched by the Dutch in 2015 (18 billion
hours).

SWITZERLAND
The most-watched program in 2016 – the Switzerland v. France match during Euro 2016 – reached
2,206,890 viewers, or three times as many Swiss people as there are cows in Switzerland. With this
number, you could also fill the biggest stadium in Switzerland (St Jakob Park) 57 times.
(Audience: Instar Analytics, Switzerland national, P3+ incl Guest, R-T cumulatice, CH-National, Overnight+7, all
platforms, SRF zwei, RTS deux, RSI LA2.
Capacity of the St.Jakob Park Basel: 38 512 seats. The numbers of cows in Switzerland: 701,000 in 2015, according to the Swiss Bundesamt für Statistik.)

BELGIUM

With the average national daily audience in Belgium, you can fill Camp Nou, the largest stadium
in Europe 76 times over. (Daily reach: Flanders 4.342.230; Walloon: 3.181.019. Capacity of the Camp Nou stadium: 98.772)

BRAZIL
132.5 million Brazilians watch TV daily and the average minute rating in primetime
is equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom (64.8 million).

CHILE

Over 5 million people watch television every day in Chile. With the figures of one day you can fill the
National Stadium of Chile (Julio Martínez Prádanos) 105 times.

COLOMBIA

This number reaches 13.5 million people daily in Colombia. That's 48% more than Columbian Actress Sofia Vergara's
followers on Twitter.

PERU

16 million in Peru in one week. The number-crunchers say that with this number you can fill Machu Picchu every day for over 17 years.
Combining a day in Chile, Peru and Colombia equals the number of people who have visited the Rio
Carnival in the last 35 years!
(Visitors capacity in Machu Pichu – 2.500. http://boletomachupicchu.com)

CHINA

The Chinese watch an average of 251 minutes of TV per day (2015), and in 2014 created 3,277,400
hours of TV content.

To celebrate their love of television, viewers are encouraged to use the hashtags #WeloveTV and
#WorldTVDay on social networks to mark World TV Day on 21 November.